Chinese Poetry and Chinese Language

My late grandmother, who was an educator in Hong Kong and China, used to write a poem for each of her new born grandchild. This is the one she wrote for me. 王观 was the original author.

水是眼波横， 山是眉峰聚。 欲问行人去那边？ 眉眼盈盈处。

才始送春归， 又送君归去。 若到江南赶上春， 千万和春住。 ——宋•王观《送鲍浩然之浙东》

Poetry can be very concise, and Chinese poetry's are especially so. For example, below is the original Chinese poem for Mulan, which Disney made into a movie.

唧唧復唧唧木蘭當戶織不聞機杼聲唯聞女嘆息

問女何所思問女何所憶女亦無所思女亦無所憶

昨夜見軍帖可汗大點兵軍書十二卷卷卷有爺名

阿爺無大兒木蘭無長兄愿為市鞍馬從此替爺征

東市買駿馬西市買鞍韉南市買轡頭北市買長鞭

朝辭爺娘去暮宿黃河邊不聞爺娘喚女聲但聞黃河流水鳴濺濺

旦辭黃河去暮至黑山頭不聞爺娘喚女聲但聞燕山胡騎聲啾啾

萬里赴戎機關山度若飛朔氣傳金柝寒光照鐵衣

將軍百戰死壯士十年歸歸來見天子天子坐明堂

策勛十二轉賞賜百千強可汗問所欲“木蘭不用尚書郎愿借明駝千里足送兒還故鄉”

爺娘聞女來出郭相扶將阿姊聞妹來當戶理紅妝

小弟聞姊來磨刀霍霍向豬羊"開我東閣門坐我西閣床

脫我戰時袍著我舊時裳."當窗理云鬢對鏡貼花黃

出門看火伴火伴皆驚惶同行十二年不知木蘭是女郎

“雄兔腳扑朔雌兔眼迷離兩兔傍地，安能辨我是雄雌?”

The beauty (or challenge, depends on who you ask) is that individual character in Chinese has limited meaning. A chinese character is similar to a letter in english. The letter "t" has limited meaning by itself. It's the combinations of characters where ideas are formed. For example, the letters "t", "e", and "a" individually aren't too useful, but the combination "tea" has a much more tangible definition. The Chinese language has more than 85,000 characters, which in theory allows it to create more combinations than the 26 letter alphabet system. This is perfect for peotry where you want to describe a concept with less words.

Here is the original Mulan poem side by side with the english translation. Notice how the english version uses many more letters than of Chinese characters. Also Chinese characters are much more complex than english letters. Something must give if you want to cram 85,000 possible combination of symbols into the same square box.

1 comment:

Ricky Wong

Hey there!!

You can call me Ricky. I'm a technologist, business person, and a student of life. This blog documents my observations and discoveries. I worked at Google, studied at INSEAD and UCSB, and have lived in France, Hong Kong, California, and Singapore. My passion is in building (hopefully useful) things. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Please don't feel alienated because of this "global digital native" persona. I actually prefer talking to people directly. Oh, btw, "Kin" is my cantonese name. This is how you write it "键". I can tell you what it means next time we meet.